Court deals a blow to liberals, but not a fatal one

Opinion: Rulings on contraception, unions are narrowly decided

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The Supreme Court issued two rulings on Monday that take a swipe at two cherished liberal ideas: Contraception and unionization.

But the rulings do not go nearly as far as some apoplectic liberals feared or as celebratory conservatives wanted. As is typical with the court, the rulings are narrowly written to avoid overturning long-standing precedents.

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the most widely followed case decided today, the court ruled that closely held companies are not required to pay for health insurance for their employees that includes contraceptive services if the owners of the companies have religious objections. A closely held company is one that is owned by five or fewer people.

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Hobby Lobby supporters at the Supreme Court react to the decision on Monday

In other words, the ruling does not apply to publicly owned companies or to privately owned companies that have more than five partners. Most workers are unaffected by today’s ruling.

The constitutional issues (whether companies have a First Amendment right to freedom of religion) was not settled today. It’s likely that the contraception mandate will go forward for the vast majority of people who get their health insurance through an employer.

And the court seems unlikely to extend the logic of Hobby Lobby to cases where a company uses a religious belief to discriminate against blacks, women or gays.

In the second case decided today, the court ruled that home health workers in Illinois are not required to pay union dues if they do not want to be members of the union that bargains with the state on behalf of all workers.

However, the justices did not overturn a longstanding precedent that requires all covered employees to pay fees to a public-sector union that bargains on their behalf. In his majority opinion in Harris v. Quinn, Justice Samuel Alito takes a lot of pot shots at their previous precedent, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, but the majority did not overturn Abood, as many liberals had feared.

Instead, the court ruled that the home health-care workers were not full-fledged public employees. Typically, these workers negotiate directly with their clients about most of their working conditions, but their salary is set in negotiations with the state of Illinois.

The court dealt a blow to liberals on Monday, but the blow wasn’t fatal. The door was opened for a stronger ruling against mandatory union dues, or for a stronger ruling upholding the religious rights of corporations, but the court did not walk through that door.

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